After my late night ramblings… I decided to give an update. Once I posted, I made a plan for today to get started making a plan. (I like to prepare… and to do that, one must prepare to prepare!) First, I set a goal to be up, dressed and ready to go by 10am so that I could have a productive day. Even though I ended up being up until 2, this was still important, or I’d be behind all day. I didn’t quite meet my goal, but I was dressed, make-uped, hair done, and baby dressed by 10:45am. I’ll take a nap later.
Last night I divided my day into phases/stages/parts (I haven’t come up with a good name for it yet. Suggestions?). These aren’t specific hourly times, but they are roughly the same each day. There is the morning, as in, between the time we get up and the time Avie goes down for her first nap. Noonish. Afternoon. Evening. There are certain things that signal the end of a phase/stage/section. For instance, Avie’s first nap signals the end of morning and the beginning of noonish. Ansen comes home for lunch, so his departure and Avie’s second nap signal afternoon. Ansen’s return from work signals evening.
The next step was to decide ONE thing I wanted to accomplish during that time period. I had basil the refrigerator that has been there for a couple of days and really needed to be made into pesto and frozen. That was on my list for “Morning”. If I didn’t get it done first thing, I probably wouldn’t get it done at all. After Avie had breakfast, I did it. It’s done! For the “Noonish” time, I am making a list of all the things I want to do (and blogging about my progress). This isn’t just all the things I want to do today, or this week… just all the things I have floating around in my head. Things that need to be done but I’m procrastinating. Things I would love to do but don’t have time for. Things I must do. Anything I can think of is going on the list. I currently have 40… no, wait… 41, just thought of one more.
The next step is to create a weekly time budget. We have a financial budget. Don’t let that word scare/fool you, it’s just a fancy way to say that we have determined ahead of time how we plan to spend our money. It ensures that we cover all of the necessities each month, but that we get to spend money on the things we actually care about, not just impulses. I mean, I could buy a half price Sonic drink every day if I wasn’t thinking about the big picture, but in reality, I would rather save all of that and spend it on something else I have deemed more important, like a date night with my hubby.
So a time budget is just that, a plan. It’s determining ahead of time how I plan to spend my time. Because I like paper, I’m going to print out an weekly grid that has each day broken down into phases. Then I’m going to start filling these sections with the things on my list. This will (hopefully) help me prioritize the things I actually want/need to do over those that I don’t have time for. And remember Murphy’s law? A task will expand or contract to fit the time allotted. If I give myself the morning to do it (like make Pesto), I have to have it done by the end of the morning (signaled by Avie’s nap). If I gave myself all day to do it… well… then I would put it off and procrastinate and may, or may not get it done. And I probably wouldn’t get much else done either.
I’m off to finish my list and make my time budget. Hopefully I can upload it later so you can see what I’ve come up with!